Rafi Saar, Mayor of Kfar Saba, Arrested With His Wife Mital: The Suspicion Is Cash Bribes for Municipal Tenders

What happened this morning

According to reports, the covert investigation was opened in May 2025 on the basis of dozens of accumulated intelligence reports. It was run by the National Fraud Investigations Unit, known in Hebrew by the acronym Yahbal, which operates within Lahav 433, with the economic department of the State Attorney's Office.

This morning the case moved into its public phase. These are the published figures:

Police reportedly said they would ask the Rishon LeZion Magistrate's Court to extend the detention of some of those held. As this article was written, no court decision on that had been published.

The alleged mechanism: cash against tenders

According to reports, the central claim of investigators is that this was not a one off event but a continuing flow of cash. Some reports state that the payments began as early as 2019, about a year after Saar took office.

The fields in which, according to reports, preference for particular bidders is being examined:

• Urban renewal
• School building renovation
• Cleaning services
• Placement of food carts
• Transport
• Street lighting and traffic lights
• Sports and entertainment venues

Reports further allege that some projects were moved to the municipal economic company, and that the transfer was intended to let favoured parties win. According to the reports, police also suspect the involvement of known criminal figures.

All of these are claims by investigators as published in the press. None has been tested in court.

The role attributed to the mayor's wife

Mital Saar holds no official position in the municipality. In reports she is described, on the authority of investigators, as a dominant figure with a hand in everything, who allegedly worked behind the scenes to help businesspeople win tenders, using her husband's standing as mayor and as chair of the planning and building committee.

"There is a great deal of talk that the mayor's wife holds the key," a municipal source said, according to a Ynet report.

Another phrase attributed to investigators in that report is "a city that was sold". That is a statement by a party to the investigation, not a finding.

A distinction is needed here. A private individual who holds no public office is not subject to the disciplinary rules and disclosure duties that apply to an elected official. If it turns out that the mechanism did operate as alleged, the legal question will not be what her formal role was, but whether the money arrived because of her husband's office. At this stage that question has no answer.

The money: what was seized, and what is still unclear

This is where the reports diverge, so we set them side by side rather than merge them into a single figure.

One sentence attributed to an investigator in the Ynet report frames the issue:

"We are not investigating a technical offence of using cash."

In other words, according to that report, the cash is not the offence but the signal. The question is where it came from.

Criminal figures: an unproven line of inquiry

According to the reports, police also suspect the involvement of known criminal figures in the affair. Their alleged role has not been published, and no names were given.

This is a line of inquiry. It has not been confirmed, no names were given, and some reports present it explicitly as unproven. We include it here because it has been widely published, and in the same breath we stress that it currently has no public evidentiary basis.

The response: stepping aside

On the morning of publication Rafi Saar announced that he was suspending himself from his post, and that his deputy Dani Harosh would fill the role in the near future. He said he understands the concern and the questions following the morning's reports, that he intends to cooperate fully with investigators, and that he cannot address details while the investigation is under way. He asked the public to refrain from drawing conclusions before the facts are established.

Stepping aside voluntarily is not a statutory procedure in the way a formal suspension is. It is the elected official's own decision, and it is reversible. The municipality continues to operate and the deputy mayor performs the role in practice.

As of publication no response had been published on behalf of Mital Saar or on behalf of the family's lawyers.

Not the first time in Kfar Saba

This case lands against a familiar background in the city. Yehuda Ben Hamo, the mayor of Kfar Saba before him, was convicted of theft by a public servant. The case centred on shopping vouchers donated for the city's needy, worth about NIS 600,000; vouchers worth hundreds of thousands of shekels stayed with him and his associates. In April 2022 he was sentenced to 24 months in prison, and on appeal to the Supreme Court, in October 2022, the sentence was increased to 30 months of actual imprisonment.

In that case, which broke in February 2017, fourteen suspects were arrested, among them the mayor, his assistant and contractors. There too the initial suspicions concerned bribery and the advancement of developers.

The fact that two similar investigations have opened in one city within less than a decade proves nothing about the present file. It does raise a question about how well the controls on municipal tenders hold up.

How a municipal tender is supposed to work

This section is not about the suspects. It is about what the law requires, and that is what allows anyone to check for themselves.

1. Public publication. A local authority is generally required to publish a public tender above threshold sums set in law. The tender is published on the authority's website and in the press.
2. Tenders committee. The decision is not the mayor's alone. It is taken by a tenders committee, whose decisions are recorded in minutes.
3. Open minutes. Minutes of the city council and its committees are generally documents that can be requested. The Freedom of Information Law allows an application for them.
4. Conflict of interest. An elected official must refrain from taking part in a discussion and a vote where he has a personal interest, and must report it.
5. Transfer to a municipal company. A municipal economic company is a separate body, but it is controlled by the authority and subject to tender law. Moving a project to it does not remove the tender requirement.
6. What you can check. Who won, for how much, how many bids were submitted, and whether the same supplier keeps being selected. A concentration of wins with one party is not an offence, but it is a starting point for a question.
7. Complaint. You can approach the municipal auditor, the Interior Ministry or the fraud investigations unit. An approach backed by documents is worth more than one based on rumour.

Timeline

What is still unknown

Police have not published the names of all those arrested, nor a breakdown of the suspicions attributed to each of them separately.

No verified figure has been published. Two different ranges appeared in reports, and we have no way to decide between them.

No judicial decision on the remand applications has been published, and it is not known who was released and who remains in custody.

It is not known whether an application will be made for a formal suspension of the mayor under the Municipalities Ordinance, and if so, when.

No response has been received from counsel for those involved, and no defence account has been published. The moment one is published it will be added here.